Private The Sal-Soren Problem

[Bastila Sal-Soren]

D'Qar had never been her favourite place. Not that the Vanguard had even used it much. She put it down to the noise.

Even here in a top secret base it was loud and constant. She was buried within the medical wing and far from the constant movement of hangars and command posts, yet still there was always something. The low drone of ventilation or the distant thrum of the generators. Even footsteps passing beyond half-closed doors made themselves so very heard.

And beneath it all, the steady mechanical pulse of the bacta tank made sure that she would never forget where they were, or why they were here.

Bastila had been told where Lorn was almost as soon as she arrived, she hadn’t even taken two steps off the shuttle when one of the deck crew pulled her aside and told her what had happened. She had chosen not to go to him. Not yet.

Instead she had gone looking for her sister.

There was something almost cowardly about that, she supposed as she moved through the base. Lorn was injured, maybe even badly enough that someone had decided immersion was preferable to anything less drastic, and every instinct drilled into Bastila over years told her that her first concern should have been her Master.

But Lorn was alive, she could feel it on the edges of her consciousness. Yet as she had gone she reminded herself that Brandyn was alive too. Somehow that frightened her.

She found her sister ironically in the last place she had gone looking for her. Stood before the Bacta tank that housed the beaten body of her Master. Bastila had slowed when she saw him, his form floating in suspension like a shard of heavy wood in water. Her eyes lingered on him for half a heartbeat, her mind racing of the path that may have just been stripped from under her before approaching. She offered no grin this time, not even a clever little comment to announce herself. Her hands disappeared into the pockets of her jacket instead.

"Bri. Thank the Force you are okay." Her eyes flicked briefly towards Lorn and then back to her sister. Who she instead rushed, threw two arms around and held for just long enough for it to be considered enough.

"I need to talk to you." Bastila's mouth tightened as she released herself from around Briana. She glanced down the corridor, checking that they were alone before continuing in a quieter voice. "It's about Brandyn."

She exhaled through her nose and tried not to look back towards Lorn, her heart sinking at just how beaten up he was.

"I was with him on Thyferra.” Bastila didn't smile at the thought. "Something's wrong with him, Briana."

For a moment Bastila was quiet.

"He looked at me like..." She stopped herself and whatever comparison had come to mind, she clearly decided against giving it life. "I don't know."

That admission seemed to irritate her more than anything else. Bastila pushed away from the wall, folding her arms across herself.

"I need you to tell me I'm imagining it Briana." Her expression said plainly that she didn't believe she was, even as she looked back at Lorn in the Bacta tube. "Because I'm starting to think our brother is in trouble, and we don’t need to lose more than we already have."

OUTFIT: XoXo | TAG: Briana Sal-Soren Referencing: Lorn Reingard Brandyn Sal-Soren EQUIPMENT:

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[Briana Sal-Soren]

Briana thought, as she watched Lorn unconscious and suspended in his bacta tank, that she should have been accustomed to all of this by now, to the aftermath of any large-scale battle and the tolls it took. The fight against the Sith went back to her Padawan days, after all. They could wear different colors, crown different Emperors, but they were all followers of the Dark Side just the same, and they were only becoming bolder as the years went on. Was the galaxy just growing darker, giving them more room to act? Or were they simply not doing enough as a whole? What was it going to take to finally bring it to an end?

How many more of her friends and family would she have to watch throw themselves into the meatgrinder trying to figure it out? She'd thought the Vanguard was the answer, but after all they'd lost, there was no telling how long it would take before they recovered from Thyferra and could act again.

"Bri. Thank the Force you are okay."

She turned toward the interruption of her private thoughts, towards her sisters familiar voice, the datapad of Lorn's vitals held aloft in her hands. The immediate read on Bastila's face made a pang of guilt shoot through her, and she quickly deposited the device onto the nearest medical table, to make sure she could catch her sister rushing into her. Her arms settled tightly around the youngest of the Sal-Soren brood, allowing herself, for those few precious seconds, to hold her. One hand settled protectively against the back of her head, stroking her fingers through her hair as their mother used to do. Bastila, who should have been somewhere laughing with friends, worrying over menial Jedi assignments or whatever other trivial disasters came off the cusp of young adulthood. Instead she was here, witnessing one more horror, one more indignity to add to the pile.

"Yeah," Briana sighed against the crown of her head, her brows drawing together when she felt the subtle shift in Bastila's posture. "I'm okay." Barely a moment later, Bastila was pulling away. At this distance, it was easy to catch sight of the bruise darkening her sister's cheek, and whatever relief she'd felt at seeing her upright and whole immediately soured. Her hand came up instinctively, fingers catching gently beneath Bastila's chin and turning her face toward the light so she could get a better look. "What happened to your face?" she asked, even as Bastila began rapid firing her concerns about Brandyn.

For several long seconds she was quiet, then slipped an arm around Bastila's shoulders and gently steered her back toward the door. "Come on," she said softly. "We'll talk, but not here." There was no reason to keep her in a place like this any longer than necessary.

Once the doors to the medical ward sealed behind them, Briana leaned back against the nearest wall. She wasn't particularly concerned about being interrupted, or overheard out here. There were too few of them left to worry about anyone wandering down these particular corridors anytime soon, not without reason anyways.

Folding her arms across her chest, she fixed Bastila with a level look, trying to decide what to say and where to start.

Did she tell Bastila that she'd caught Brandyn half out of his mind and torturing someone, again? That she'd handled it in the worst way possible, throwing him across the room and leveling a lightsaber at his face because she'd been terrified of watching him kill another person on her watch, of letting the same mistakes and consequences that'd defined the last few years begin all over again?

Did she tell her what she'd felt on Thyferra? How Brandyn took all of that pain inside him and shoved it through their bond until she'd been choking on it too? How she'd turned around and fed it into her own fight, weaponizing something that wasn't even hers because she hadn't known what else to do with it? Her eyes briefly looked down at her one real hand, where the crescent marks from her nails were still healing after Brandyn invaded her head.

She knew her failure to give her any sort of immediate reassurance would likely send her into more of a spiral, but she wasn't about to lie to her face, either - despite every instinct in her telling her to do exactly that, to protect her.

"I wish I could tell you that," Briana said, sympathy softening her expression. "But I don't know. Brandyn's letting himself be consumed by Gianna's disappearance and he's not acting like himself." She paused, briefly looking away. "He called me out to an old New Way base on Janara III. Started talking about Dad, about everything that happened..." Her mouth tightened. "He was barely making sense half the time and I could tell he hadn't slept properly in days. Maybe weeks. I don't know for sure. We got into it and things got heated, then the call came through from Lorn about Thyferra, and the rest was left unresolved."

Her eyes moved back to Bastila's face, lingering on the bruise darkening her cheek as a sick feeling settled into the pit of her stomach. "What happened between you two on that battlefield, Bast?" she asked, quieter now. "I felt Brandyn." Her brows drew together. "Whatever was happening to him, whatever he was feeling... it was bad enough that he shoved all of it into me from halfway across those bacta fields." Her gaze returned pointedly to Bastila's cheek.

"Did he do that?"

TAG: Bastila Sal-Soren

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[Bastila Sal-Soren]

"No." Bastila's hand rose to her cheek almost reflexively, fingertips brushing against the discolouration as if she'd forgotten it was there until Briana pointed it out. For the briefest moment she looked confused, then understanding dawned. "I mean yes, no; no, Bri. Brandyn didn't do this. He didn’t mean to I know he didn’t."

There was an edge to the correction. Something strangely protective, yet at the same time as if a great swelling of emotion had suddenly filled every part of her face.

"He didn't hit me." Her hand dropped. "It was some Sith did. Or a soldier. Maybe a tree." A faint shrug followed, the closest Bastila managed to humour in an attempt to stop the tears that were forming under her eyes from spilling forth. "There were a lot of things trying to kill me that day."

Normally she might have made more of it. A grin, perhaps. Some ridiculous embellishment about heroically fighting the tree but nothing came. How does one tell someone that everything you held honourable in your heart had been killed in one swift action?

Instead Bastila looked back towards the sealed doors. Lorn remained on the other side, suspended in bacta while the machines did what none of them could. She stared for a few seconds before lowering her voice.

"There was a Sith there." Bastila swallowed. "Brandyn found her or she found us, I don’t really know which."

That was where it became harder. She folded her arms, not defensively but tightly, hands disappearing beneath her elbows as if she was holding it all in, desperate to not let it go.

"I don't know what you felt from him, Bri. I was right there and I'm still not sure I understand it." Her eyes lowered. "He had her. She was beaten. Whatever fight there had been between them was over." Bastila's jaw tightened. "And he wouldn't stop."

She could still see it. Brandyn's hands around that Sith. The hatred in him pouring out of him, Bastila pulling at him, trying to make him hear her.

"I told him we needed her alive. She said she knew where Gianna was. I told him killing her wasn't going to bring Gianna back."

"He didn’t listen…" The words were quieter than everything that had preceded them.

Bastila finally looked at Briana again. "I've seen Brandyn angry. I've seen him hurt. Force knows, I've spent most of my life deliberately causing the first one." A little ghost of something crossed her expression, "But that wasn't Brandyn losing his temper."

Her brow furrowed, her expression not directed towards her sister as she tried to recollect those moments.

"I saw a monster that had found a way out at last."

Perhaps it was she who was exaggerating and the distinction shouldn't have mattered. The Sith had hurt Brandyn, tormented him, taken his daughter. Bastila could think of a hundred arguments for why the galaxy was better without her in it.

None of them made what she had watched feel right.

"You're telling me he was like this before Thyferra? That he called you to some abandoned New Way base talking about Dad. That he hasn't been sleeping. That he's been putting whatever is inside his head into yours."

She stopped.

"Bri..." For once, the youngest Sal-Soren looked every bit her age. "I think we really should start asking ourselves what is happening to our brother?"

OUTFIT: XoXo | TAG: Briana Sal-Soren | Brandyn Sal-Soren EQUIPMENT:

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[Briana Sal-Soren]

The impulse to cut Bastila off rose the moment she spoke of Brandyn as though his name and monster were interchangeable, her lips parting before she knew what she was going to say. That Bastila didn’t mean it? That neither of them could truly understand what Brandyn was going through? That this was their brother they were talking about?

Then she remembered the facility. Her gaze returned to the bruise darkening Bastila's cheek, listening to the excuses she'd given to explain it away, and to the effort it was costing her sister to tell the story of what'd happened on Thyferra.

Her mouth snapped closed.

“I think we both know what’s happening to him.” Her brow furrowed, and she folded her arms across herself, her gaze dropping from her sister’s face to the floor. Even now, she couldn’t quite bring herself to name it. “The question is whether we’re ready to confront it.” A long, exasperated sigh fell from her lips and she shook her head, raising her chin to meet Bastila's gaze again.

“At the base on Janara, he was torturing someone.” She admitted, her heart picking up by several notches at the admission, stripped of all the careful language she’d been using to water down what'd happened, earlier. “That’s what we argued about. He said that he was one of the scientists responsible for what happened to Lossa and Blaire's kids... said he knew something about Gianna. I don't think he meant for me to find out he was doing it, and I…” Her fingers dug into her arms until it was painful. “I threw him across the room and drew my saber on him. I thought he was going to kill them, and I was so angry with him that I couldn’t - ” She broke off, swallowing.

“Then the call for Lorn came through and I called the authorities on him. Told myself we’d finish dealing with it afterwards and just... left." The last word came out thin, and the breath she tried to take afterward stopped short. Should she have stayed? Would anything have gone differently? Was there a choice that kept everyone safe, one that she'd failed to find?

“I frakking knew he was getting worse,” Her eyes stung. She blinked hard and dragged the heel of her palm under them, rough, as if she could scrub the feeling away. "I knew, and I frakking left anyways. Gods damn it." Her voice cracked just slightly on the last word before Briana quickly and forcefully cleared her throat, schooling her expression. The change was near immediate. "Do you know where he went after Thyferra?"

TAG: Bastila Sal-Soren
FYI: Brandyn Sal-Soren
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[Bastila Sal-Soren]

Bastila had wanted Briana to understand. She had come here with the words caught behind her teeth, half afraid that speaking them would make her disloyal, half afraid that her sister would find some kinder explanation for what she had seen. Now, listening to her describe Janara, she found herself wishing there had been one.

Her mind slipped towards the bacta tank, now well hidden from them both. Within it Lorn hung beyond the glass, unreachable, while they had survived.The thought made her stomach tighten. She looked back at Briana, at the hand dragged beneath her eyes and the composure forced into place afterwards, and recognised something of her own efforts to make the bruise seem unimportant.

“You left because your duties needed you,” she said quietly. “You did something, Bri.”

She reached for her sister’s arm, hesitating only when the movement pulled at the lingering soreness in her shoulder.

“I was on Thyferra telling him to stop. Told him we needed her alive, that killing her wouldn’t bring Gianna back.” Her fingers settled lightly against Briana’s sleeve. “He heard me, he just chose not to.”

That remained the part she could not find a way around. Through everything else, the fighting, the terrible absence where the Force should have been, the fear for Brandyn himself; she had still believed her voice might reach him. His little sister. Someone he had once made feel safe simply by being in the room.

“I keep going over it, wondering whether I should have said something else. Whether I could have got between them.” Her eyes dropped briefly. “I don’t know where he went after, we got back to the evacuation point and got separated. I assume he went home naboo.”

Bastila let her hand fall. If there was any comfort she could offer Briana now was the time to try and offer it.

A small crease formed between her brows as if she was recalling something. “He might have gone after another lead. If he still thinks he can find Gianna, he’s surely gone home to chase that…”

She stopped, feeling the familiar instinct to soften what came next. Brandyn was grieving. Brandyn was frightened. Brandyn loved his daughter. All that was true, and none of it had kept the woman on Thyferra alive.

“Do we need to find him?” she continued. “If we do, I want us to go together. I don’t want either of us trying to handle this alone. I just need to make sure Lorn is healed first, not the best look for a padawan to go off while her master is stuck in a Bacta tank.”

Her gaze returned to Briana’s face, steady despite the apprehension gathering beneath her ribs.

“I still want my brother back. But what if the reality is setting that we have to stop him?” She swallowed. “Even if he won’t ever forgive us for it.”

OUTFIT: XoXo | TAG: Briana Sal-Soren FYI: Brandyn Sal-Soren EQUIPMENT:

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[Briana Sal-Soren]

Briana glanced down at the hand on her forearm, then laid her own over it and gave an appreciative squeeze, a silent 'thanks'. Even if she wasn’t quite ready to stop picking apart everything she could have done differently, Briana understood what Bastila was getting at, and there was something both humbling and heartening about having her little sister turn the very same advice she'd typically give, back on her.

They'd each tried to reach their brother using different methods. She’d gone at Brandyn with a blade and Bastila went at him with her voice, and he walked away from both.

She shook her head, slowly. “No, you did everything right. If you’d gotten between them, it would’ve made things worse. And when he was in that state...” The thought had barely taken shape before a mental wall erected itself to shut the idea down. "Well, it's better that you didn't have to find out.”

Once Bastila’s hand fell away, Briana raised her thumb to her mouth and pressed the edge of the nail against her front teeth, her other arm cradling her elbow to help hold it in place. A bad habit she’d often get reprimanded for as a child, but one she'd never quite shaken, and surfaced most whenever nerves and thought collided.

“Yeah.” The word came out flat, level, and Briana felt something in her chest go still as she said it. “We need to find him... and we can do it together, like you said.” Her thumb pressed once more against her teeth before she lowered her hand. There was a great deal in Bastila’s last few sentences that deserved an answer, but there was one word in particular she caught on, like thread on a nail. “Wait, pause... Padawan?” Her brow lifted. “Still?” She’d assumed it was already done.

Lorn had talked about knighting Bastila long before Thyferra, and with the weeks since swallowed whole by one crisis after another, Briana simply filed it away as a finished deal, another milestone she’d missed in the lives of the people she loved, which always had a habit of happening while she was elsewhere.

"We can get that much easily settled." There was usually a more proper way for this to go. A Master’s recommendation, kneeling in the hall of the Jedi for witnesses to see it done. But the Master in question was forty feet away and floating in a tube, and the only audience on offer was a flickering strip light and the endless drone of the ventilation. Her saber came off her belt and she weighed it once in her palm, unlit, then stepped back to clear a patch of scuffed floor between them. The smile that tugged at her mouth was small and crooked, and the first real one in days.

“Kneel down, Bast."

TAG: Bastila Sal-Soren

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[Bastila Sal-Soren]

Bastila stared at her sister.

She had been prepared to talk about finding Brandyn, to offer what little she knew and make herself useful before either of them could think too long about what might happen when they did. As such she had not been prepared for the lightsaber in Briana’s hand, or the small, crooked smile that made her sister look more like herself than she had since Bastila entered the room.

“Here? Now?”

Her gaze wandered past Briana to the patch of floor she had cleared, then towards the door that hid Lorn’s tank and room of recovery. There was an absurd objection waiting somewhere on her tongue about the location, about ceremonies and witnesses and whether the medics would appreciate them igniting a lightsaber beside their equipment. It would have been easier to make a joke. Easier still to smile and insist that they had more important things to worry about.

Instead, her throat tightened and she gave Briana an apprehensive look.

“I thought we’d wait until he…”

She could not quite finish it. Until he woke up. Until he was well enough to stand beside her, until there was a day on which nobody needed rescuing and nothing had been lost. She had imagined that day often enough, although she had rarely admitted it to herself. Lorn’s voice, steady and familiar. Briana there to see it. Perhaps even Brandyn, looking pleased with her in that way she would have pretended not to care about.

Her eyes lingered on the door that protected the figure suspended beyond the glass.

For all the times she had wondered whether she was ready, she had never considered how much she wanted to be able to be told that she was.

Bastila drew a slow breath and looked back at her sister. The smile she managed was unsteady, but there was warmth in it.

“You make it sound very simple.”

She unfastened her lightsaber from her belt. Her thumb rested briefly against the worn grip before she laid it carefully on the nearby bench, taking a moment over its placement that the task did not require. Without it, she found herself strangely conscious of her empty hands, of the way her fingers wanted to curl into her palms.

There were things she ought to say. Questions she could ask about whether Lorn had truly thought her ready, whether Briana was certain, whether the things she had survived amounted to anything more than having survived them. Each offered a little more time before she had to accept what was being offered.

But Briana knew her. She knew enough of the fear and the mistakes, and Bastila would not ask her to defend this decision simply because accepting it frightened her.

“Alright,” she said softly.

She stepped into the space between them and lowered herself onto one knee, careful with the movement. The floor was cold through the fabric of her trousers. Somewhere behind her, the bacta system cycled with a low mechanical hum, and she found herself glad that Lorn was close enough to hear, even if he could not answer.

Bastila straightened her back and lifted her chin towards Briana. For once, she let her sister see how much it meant.

“Sooo am I meant to say something? Or do you talk?”

OUTFIT: XoXo | TAG: Briana Sal-Soren FYI: Lorn Reingard EQUIPMENT:

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[Briana Sal-Soren]

Briana’s smile widened a fraction at the question, and some of the tension she’d been carrying across her shoulders eased. Of all the things Bastila might have said, of course it would be that. Even now, on one knee on a cold floor with her whole life about to tilt, her little sister was still looking for the joke.

“Traditionally, you kneel there and look solemn.” She turned the saber over in her palm, thumb tracing the emitter. “Which you’re doing beautifully, for the record.” A pause, and the smile tipped crooked again, then went still. It was strange, what the mind chose to hold onto.

She could still see the girl who used to trail after her through the halls of their family estate, all elbows and knees, indignant at any suggestion that she was too young to come along. In a way, Bastila made older siblings of all three of them, giving them someone to adore without the familiar, petty friction of comparison. They could delight in her accomplishments without feeling diminished by them, agree that she needed protecting even when they agreed on little else. Briana carried that little girl with her for so long that she sometimes struggled to see past her.

But in that moment, looking down at her kneeling, chin lifted and slightly bruised, Bastila looked like someone she’d have been proud to stand beside on any battlefield, and a deep sense of pride bloomed inside her chest.

When did that happen? Briana wondered silently to herself, searching backward through the years for an exact moment, and coming up empty handed.

After taking a deep breath and clearing her throat, Briana began to speak again, a little emotional this time. "Lorn might not be physically able say it right now, but. I know you've made him very proud, and there won't be a Jedi or soldier on this planet who could deny that you've earned this honor. In skill, mindset, and heart, you're every bit a Jedi Knight that one could be, and it should go without saying, but I'm very proud of you too."

She gave a small shake of her head, almost impatient with herself, and pushed aside the unexpected swell of emotions tightening in her chest. Instead, she squared her shoulders and found the posture and dignity that the moment deserved. The activation stud clicked under her thumb, and the white blade rose with a low hiss, its glow catching on the edges of Bastila’s face. “By the authority of the Council and the will of the Force, Bastila Sal-Soren…” She guided the blade above her sister’s shoulders, pausing over each in turn. “I dub thee a Knight of the Jedi Order.”

Slowly the blade lifted away and Briana extinguished it.

“You may rise.”

TAG: Bastila Sal-Soren

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